


(for)ever yours.

by RookieBrown



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Artist Clarke, Best Friends to Lovers, Clexa Endgame, F/F, Happy Ending, Her/She refers all to Lexa, Journalist Lexa, Lots of Angst, Love Letters, Smut, University, by the way, jealousy undertones, lots of pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-08-19 12:40:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8208344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RookieBrown/pseuds/RookieBrown
Summary: “How long does a second last?”  Clarke drives her palms manically through her curled mane, stealing words in between tongued kisses.“We’ll make it last forever.” Lexa says.Or,A "Love Letters-esque" Clexa AU





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> This songs goes with my fic,
> 
> "Blue" by Troye Sivan.

 

Everything’s hazy and blurry, the bar lights shine vehemently too brightly around, pulsing the veins in your forehead into prominence. But still in your mushy legs, your wobble forward to your destination.

 

Raven laughs heartily at something _she_ says and you watch as your best friend tuck _her_ a loosened strand from her face and gently place it behind _her_ ear. When Raven moves forward to hush something into the gorgeous brunette making _her_ topple over in a melodic laughter, its then you reach your breaking point.

 

You put down the glass harshly on the table and move in a beeline towards them. You are reeking in alcohol, your eyes are blood shot but the clench in your hand in undeterred at the scenario.

 

You push Raven’s hand away from _her_ , callously the yellow golden liquid slips from the container as the glass clatters into a zillion pieces on the bar floor. You don’t bother about the nuisance, it’s _her_ all you care about. When you tug onto her clumsily, its then you notice you don’t know her at all.

 

It’s a complete stranger only with vague similarities of _her_.

 

You retrace your path back in your utter drunkard haze, peeling your eyes off her to look at Raven who’s seething under her red jacket. You barely watch her nod to that stranger before clasping onto your arm and pulling you out into the frost bite of the twilight night.

 

 

 

“God Griffin, it happened months ago. Like 5 fucking months ago, once.” _And she’s been gone away 3 weeks now, you think aloud._ Raven ceases before once again sucking off the butt of her cigarette and heaving out the grey smoke.

 

You disagree heavily at her sudden addiction for smoking. But unlike _her,_ you don’t tell her out loud.

 

“But I have to say, she’s one of the best I have had, really good in the sack.” Raven says.

 

Raven’s trying to get a rise out of you, even you know that but she doesn’t know about the voices of your head and heart that for the first time agrees onto something unitedly.

 

You didn’t punch Raven the first time when you came to know about their little nightly escapade but now you didn’t think twice before imprinting your fist on your best friend’s right cheek.

 

She stammers back a few feet further from you, hand holding the sore skin that you have cut deep. She rubs the iron red fluid off.

 

“I guess I deserved that.”

 

The pauses stretches too long.

 

“Do you love _her_?” She finally asks a second time.

 

The pain in your head jolts your heavy-lidded eyes to sleep but you fight against it.   

 

 

_You remember the first time she asked you that._

_“Do you love her, Clarkey?”_

_You were so confused, so shuffled and lost at the volume and deniability of your feelings that you had said, “No, I don’t.”_

_“Then stop looking at her like your existence depends on it.”_

“I do.”

 

Raven nods. She whistles you down a cab and pulls off her jacket and places it gently on you.

 

“We’ll talk tomorrow, Clarkey.”

( 1 month since _she_ left. ) 

 

 

You sit at the _TonDC_ café ambiguously stirring the coffee. The deep purplish gash that forms emasculating on Raven’s lips doesn’t escape your gaze makes you guilty for not schooling in your emotions well, for letting it play out on the big screen but you aren’t guilty enough to apologize to her.

 

And you know she knows that.

 

“Do you love _her_?” She asks you again the third time now, breaking the ice barricade of a silence that never used to be there between the two of you.

 

You come to a halt at her repeated question.

 

“You asked me that last night. But still, I do. Love her.”

 

“What happened between _her_ and me, Clarke, you have to know that it was a one-time thing. But even though she doesn’t feel the same way about me, doesn’t mean I don’t care about _her_. So I just had to ask it when you were not intoxicated.”

 

You slip the burning coffee and let it flame up your insides.

 

“I think I’ll always be intoxicated on _her_ , Raven. Always.”

 

You both fill in the chit-chat with small talk and mostly of conversations that range from everything to nothing. At least the both of you are getting somewhere. When the bill is paid and the both of you are going out, Raven peels out another cigarette from her pack.

 

“Don’t smoke, Rae. It’s not good and _she_ wouldn’t approve either.”

 

“She’s not here, is she?”

(1 month and 1 day, counting, since _she's_ gone.) 

 

 

I saw two girls kissing, you know, in that library bench by the window still that we marked as ours and it reminded me of you. It’s not just that though. You are everywhere, even behind closed eyes. Even my grey dreams are marred with your green strokes and I never want to open my eyes because I know when I’ll open them, you’ll be not here by me. With me.

And I can’t stand that.

I thought I could.

I believed I could, but I can’t.

I don’t want to.

_Missing you,_

_Yours C._  

 

 

 

I’m not a strong person.

They move on. _I can’t, not from you._

They embrace change. _That would mean letting go, so I don’t._

They keep control. _On white canvas, I let my pen fly without inhibition._

They stay happy. _I try, but I fail most of the time._

And, they accept full responsibility for their past behavior. _That, that I do._

But I’m no strong person.

Not like you.

I’m a coward in a cloak of strength.

_Love,_

_Yours C._

 

 

 

 _Heartache, melancholy and woe._ I always thought they were the fuel that would drive the artist in me to perfection. But, no they don’t.

Chase that inspiring greatness, perfection will follow.

You taught me that.

_Thank you._

_Yours C._

 

 

 

I don’t know why I even keep writing to you, just few words on a paper. Maybe because I’m hoping someday when you return you’ll read them but now it’s become sort of an odd habit that’s growing on me, like I’m crunching my thoughts and moments and sending them out to you, slipping these letters down the slit of your forever closed door.

I think that whenever we spoke, more words were always left unsaid. Maybe this is me, filling the gaps.

_Forever,_

_Yours C._

 

 

 

You have vague memory of it. The crash.

 

You commemorate that the two of you were fighting.

_A cold war of emotions._

_Don’t mind me,_ your dad, who had come all the way to pick up both of you post your third semester exams, all but said gesturing between the two of you before settling himself in the backseat and pulling onto his headphones, rather uncharacteristic of a parent, to give you both some reluctant privacy.

 

“Niylah’s a womanizer, Clarke. I just don’t want to see you hurt.” She pack-pedals.

 

“Too late for that.” You mumble under your breathe, your hands clasped onto the wheel but your eyes dart to the rear mirror to catch a glimpse of her.

 

This new found awkwardness was first established because of a stupid dare where you had to kiss her. It was plain cut simple, right out of the book.

 

And you didn’t put much thought in it too because it was her after all. But the instant, you felt the mild shy push of her buxom lips against yours, you were stomped under the burden of realization that every other kiss you had before had ardently failed in comparison to hers.

 

Now every interaction, no matter how irrelevantly small it might be seemed magnanimous to a flustered you.

 

“If you had only said yes …”

 

“To being your lesbian sex experimentation because what, your straight heart can’t decide which team to play for?” She hurls her words at you, the hurt in grey streaks on her irises making you tighten inside. The allegation in her words holds you captive in your criminal of a sentence.

 

“And what exactly are you and Costia Greene?” You seethe back to her, jealousy sprouting out. “Friends with great benefits and even greater feelings?”

 

“You don’t know about my feelings, so don’t you dare judge them.”

 

“Because you love being a Fort Knox?” You look up to meet her. “What if I want a key to your … ”

 

But you never got to finish it.

 

The havoc was brought about when the driver of the truck in front you lost control. The steer wheel flicked out, the driver desperately tried to clasp the automobile into his domain but he failed. Miserably.

 

The truck overturned on the small bridge. Got derailed and hurled back heavily into two SUVs. One of which was yours. Lexa, saucer eyed, panicked trying to whirl the car out of harm’s way before you ever hold it in, shrilling out your name. You held onto her like a lifeline, but within a wink, your world changed. The car pivoted out and barreled past the railings of the bridge into the cascading river.

_Oh, I got a long, long way to go, got a long way I know Before I can say goodbye, before I say goodbye …._

 

The radio crackled under the rowdy water clashing in and the sound died.

 

You had woken up to white lights of a cramped hospital room with cold institutional tile floor. Uncoordinated and so numb. When you tried to move, a jolt wrenched your body and you screamed.

 

Masked men rushed in and so did your family. And her.

 

Intravenous dosages were shot into you, you were vision getting blurrier but you noticed how white she looked.

 

Like she had seen a ghost. Or she had come from ……

 

But before you could think more, she crossed over the nurse and squeezed your hand.

 

Verdant eyes shrouded in a faceless tar.

 

“You’ll be okay.”

 

You wanted to ask about your father but the feather kiss that she pressed on your cheeks warmed the frost in you. You forgot your voice, and took solace in her words and closed your eyes.

 

 

You stared dejectedly at the peeled off ceiling when calamity broke.

 

Your father was dead.

 

The _how_ that your asked so many times left unanswered but the drench of tears, the shying away of green eyes, the not so subtle nod between your crying mother Abby and Anya, every time you looked at them .. at her, made your tears break anew.

 

“I couldn’t save you both, so I chose.” She had told to you.

_She chose me. She chose me._

 

It plagued your thoughts. Three sinful words.

 

“You chose me over my father.” You gritted out, your hold on the hospital bedsheets tightening. “The chances of my survival was so so much fucking slim, but still your chose me?” You aggrieved at her.

 

“Because I couldn’t watch you die.” In your pain killer reeked mind you thought you saw her cry. For her parents. For her Nona. You vexed her but still you tried to reach out to her, before sleep stole you.

(15 months, before  _she_  leaves.)

 

 

It’s been only 3 months since he’s gone. You barely survived it. Then how will you survive a forever without him?

 

Physiotherapy was suggested.

 

You attend the appointments, coming and going but it doesn’t seem to make anything any better.

 

Your hand still trembles.

 

You take another tablet from the night stand beside you and instead of taking it with water, you open up your flask instead, only to have to ripped away from you.

 

“Why? Why? Why would you do that?” you snarled.

 

She discards the contents wordlessly in the basin.

 

“You are not my mother, Woods, so stop pretending you give a shit, Little Miss perfect valedictorian.” You sneer at her. 

 

“Because I love you. I’m in love with you.” She had confessed in love stricken eyes and the words shock the core of your soul. Roseate eyes peered at your vexed ones, the blunt honesty of open hearts held bare in the open.

 

You loved her. You did. She’s your best friend, but you dearly loved your father too.

 

You were here. And he wasn’t. He would never be.

 

Her confession loses out under his bygone weight. 

 

“And I loved my father.” You slumped on your bed. “How could you be so selfish?”

 

You watched her shoulders slump underneath your words. Wet tears renewed.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“I can’t look at you anymore.” You whispered amidst the convulsed lips.

 

You didn’t look up when the door opened and shut close. But the trail of her unrequited loved words ghosted your sleep.

(12 months before _she_ leaves.)

 

 

They said that the nerves of your left hand, your dominant hand, were damaged astutely and that you wouldn’t be able to recover its full flexibility. But with the correct physical therapy, 80% gain was possible if not higher.

 

They said and you listened. Barely.

 

You wanted her to be here with you.

 

To hold your hand, and elevate you higher.

 

But she wasn’t here, because you didn’t want her.

 

Because whenever you saw her, you saw the ghost of your father.

 

Because she was in love with you and you …. You only knew that he wasn’t here because of her.

(11 and 1/2 months before _she_ leaves.) 

 

 

Anya Black got a full soccer scholarship ride to Arkadia University.

 

And _she_ being an over achiever came here with an academic scholarship.

 

The solidary ground for their obnoxious friendship was borne out of their common love for soccer and that one particular friendly competition those two had the horns in their head locked in, the first time they met.

 

Your cousin, as always, was boosting about her goalie prowess at the ring and in a very post victory bliss she had challenged anyone to get a goal out of her and _she_ accepted out of that anyone.

 

You have heard everyone describe history being written as momentary. Momentarily gravitating and significant, that is.

 

The ball had wheezed past Anya even before she could get up on her feet to stop it.

 

3 out of 5 times.

 

Everyone had expected senior soccer captain Anya to lash out at the young freshman or the freshman to maybe boost about it high and low.

 

But no drama enfolded.

 

They shook hands like to victors.

 

She had even offered _her_ ArkU Nightbloods’ forward striker role but _she_ refused just like that.

 

Instead, they trained together off-field, went on long runs off the campus in the wee hours of the still sleeping sun and often than not you had found them sitting on _her and yours_ designated seat at the library, where Anya would bang her head against the wood mulling over some Literature notes that _she_ made for your joyous cousin.

 

Anya’s hot headed sassy aloofness somehow fitted benevolently well with _her_ brooding witting silence.  

 

You knew how much _she_ loved soccer.

 

You wondered if _she_ ever regretted her choice.

 

She had answered you in an admirably resolute no. “I love soccer but I don’t love it more than her academics.”

 

 Just like you couldn’t be more happier than choosing art before medicine.

 

 

 

When I asked her about you. All Anya only told me she didn’t know when you would be coming back.

I hate the commiseration in her eyes when she adds sorrowing, _if you were ever coming back._ I saw her sniff indignantly on her sleeves before throwing the phone on the couch.

She waits for you. You have yet to call her back.

I know she knows it. Knows, how I feel about you even if the quiver in my lips scream otherwise. Maybe, because she’s my sister. She understands me, or she tries and I hate it. I know she hates it too because sometimes she can’t even meet my eyes.

She’s your best friend too.

I told her I’m sorry.

I never got to tell you, though.

_I’m sorry,_

_Yours C._

 

 

 

I don’t know when I fell for you. It wasn’t love at first sight but it was a chance. The chance that lead to the foundation to a choice. I fell in love with you in every possible way a human being can. Over and over again.

The moon didn’t seem brighter or any way bigger.

There wasn’t any orchestra playing in the background.

Nor, I was energized.

There wasn’t even a burst of the butterflies in me.

But there was this irrevocable stealing of breathe.

There was the infinite tightening in my chest.

There was the serene melodious pounding of my proverbial heart.

I’m dreaming of you with open eyes.

And trust me, I have never felt more awake.

_I love you, did I say that before?_

_Yours C._

 

 

 

“I don’t.” You say.

 

She flutters her eyes. One. Twice. Thrice.

 

She tried to put up a brave front but you can see her battle away her tears.

_I don’t love you._

 

Incomplete words resonate in you. You can detect the dishonesty, the shallow depth of your blatant lie but she cannot.

 

She always sees the unseen between your lines, reads you exponentially well like a bare book, but today she doesn’t detect it.

 

She sees only parallel lines.

 

And it claws into you. You want to tell her, to scream at her not to believe you but the said words but already had its impact.

 

She closes her eyes and breathes in. You choke onto your own tears.

 

“I know what we are.” She whimpers. “And I know what we are not or we’ll never be.” And she leaves you to drown under the pouring rain.

 

Under the wet eyelids you struggle against to watch her fading figure walk away. When the rain drains heavier, you wonder if its her tears that you stand under, drenching in.

_You wanted to hurt her._

_You broke her heart. You did._

_But in breaking her heart, you realized you stabbed yours too._

_(6 months before _she_ leaves.) _

 

 

I want to do all the boring stuff with you.

I want to feel bored with you, holding your hands and wasting Friday nights.

I want to kiss you from head to toe, wrap my arms around and you never let you go.

_Please come home,_

_Yours C._

 

 

 

I thought I saw Raven with you, sitting at the bar. She was so so close to you I couldn’t even branch in my anger.  

And so I dismantled her face.

I know you don’t like violence, but I couldn’t not that let it be. You don’t know how much I hate her for touching you the way I thought only I could do.

But I hated you more. I wanted to kill you.

Because you let her touch you. You let her scream out your name.

It’s like you were twisting this knife in my open wound, entwining and wreathing it inside, killing me slowly.

_I wanted to punch you then kiss your entirety,_

_Yours “reckless” C._

 

 


	2. Two

_She was born on 8 th Feb, 1992. Just barely out of the crisp and into the arms of spring winter in Polis General Hospital._

_You were born on on 25 th November, 1993. Just barely into the crisp of a bleak winter in Polis General Hospital._

_You were 2 and she was 3 when you first meet her in some park. In the same park, where your dad and met her dad after years of school and graduation. Somehow their destiny took them away, but it was destiny also that weaved both of their paths together._

_Entwined, your father described it._

_So were you and her._

_You don’t have a crystal clear memory of your first encounter, but you do remember chubby rosy cheeks and long intricate braids trailing behind her, as she ran in short legs trying to dribble a soccer ball and head on went crashing into you._

_You fell of course._

_And she kinda fell too with you, trying to steady you up._

_You are pretty sure you started crying even before you could stop yourself but she being she kissed every single one of them again._

_“Papa said kisses make it better.” She rationalizes, recounting those exact words Uncle Gustus told her. “Do you feel better?”_

_You had nodded a big no._

_She had wrapped her dirty hands around your neck and started crying into your blonde mop of hair mumbling out sorrys. Uncountable ones._

_Something cemented in the little you when you saw her blurry eyes. It was something that made you stop crying and instead palming off her teary eyelids._

_A photo clicked somewhere in the background. One of the first that you have of her._

_“I’m Clarke.” You introduced yourself over ice-cream._

_“Isn’t that a boy’s name?” She had said, butterscotch dripping off her furrowing thoughtful lips. “It suits you. Clarke. It’s pretty.” She repeated, tasting the name time and again on her lips._

_“I think your name’s pretty too, Alexandria. Long but pretty.”_

_Another click resonated somewhere behind the both of you._

_Your photo albums are pretty much all embroidered with her._

_It’s weird._

_Some memories so old, you can’t even recount them that well._

_Some memories so fresh, as if it was just yesterday._

_But it is what it is._

_A wall of frozen memories._

_Every single one you wouldn’t change for anything._

_She was a mess of beautiful contradictions._

 

You were meant to be best friends you suppose, right out from the womb. And by god, you were. Lexa’s father, Gustus was your dad’s best friend so it was only logical that the both of you turn to be best friends, residing in the small town and all.

 

It wasn’t your choice though. It was more like entrusted upon you. And if your pre-school and kindergarten days were anything to go by, you were always glad it was her.

 

Her. Her. Her. Always her.                             

 

She was shorter than you, tender at an age of only 5 but she would fight any senior 7 year olds who dareth steel your cookies or make you cry.

 

She would kiss your cuts in slippery kisses and count the stars sprung up in the sky in your treehouse.

 

Her mind was loud, but her words were silent. As long as you can remember.

 

You still remember her crying in the crook of your mother’s neck on Mother’s Day, iridescent eyes all blackened and clouded, wailing and trying not to miss her so-called mother, a woman who had left her and her father just a year short of her birth, leaving behind just countable words of _how she wasn’t ready yet, how she’ll never be ready for her._ Maybe it was the first that you wanted to hurt someone else, because she was crying and you had always considered her, yours to protect.

 

You remember, you remember your 10 year self had vowed to her in front of a porcelain Jesus, that you’ll be forever with her no matter the distance if it had come to separate you.

 

But somewhere in between, the thousand miles of distance did tear out the strings of your friendship.

 

At the age of 13 when Gustus Woods died of an immature heart attack, it was his mother, Lexa’s only living relative and grandmother who took her under her wings.

 

Luna’s eyes were perhaps the warmest green you had ever seen. Sublime and tender. Nurturing, she had hold onto Lexa’s grey ones kissing away each of her tears that escaped her little one’s face.

_She deserves all the happiness in the world,_ you pray under your breath and try not to cry when she clings her soft hands against the uplifting glass of the Mercedes and you wordlessly trace the palms lines on the other side off the transparent glass.

 

The car starts moving and your hand starts slipping.

 

Your small legs fall short to chase the hot wheels that disappears out of your view point.

 

 

 

Though, six years plays short and vanishes under the memories of those 13 years when your path crosses with _her_ at Arkadia University.

 

 _She_ settles like rain in your life. Benign and calm. As if she had never left.

_She’s_ Aphrodite in her beauty. Athena rules her persona. There’s a cerulean haze in her walk like Poseidon. Her cold ruthless demeanor screams Hades. But she loves, she loves still like Alexandria Woods.

 

_Your Lexa._

 

Her mind is still loud, her voice still silent.

 

She still looks at you like you are the only one in a room full of people.

 

And you, you look at her like the sky had finally found her home in the ground.

 

 

 

You said loving me is easy.

You said in full consciousness summarizing the heartbreaks, the heartaches, your past life experiences everything. You said that.

And I agree.

_Loving you is the easiest._

_Yours C._

 

 

 

Remember Dante? Wallace? He’s this art patron who often commissions me to draw for his office.

Anyway, he wanted to buy that painting I had drawn about your spiraling charcoal tattoos against your velour tanned skin.

I said no. He doubled the price. I said no again. This time he tripled it.

But I told him, _Ink Splotches_ is and will be forever _priceless._

I don’t know if you remember, but you were so fidgety that day. You couldn’t even sit still for a minute stretch, always peering your head to me. When I snorted, you had tenderly said, _Can’t keep my eyes off you for a second._

And I couldn’t keep my eyes off those two dimples dampening at your spine.

I didn’t realize how much I was, _am,_ in love with you, until … until you were gone.

_I love you,_

_Yours C._

 

 

The call came when you both were taking your art history exam for your first year finals. December 15th, you think.

She had rushed out, paper and pen all forgotten. And without blink, you had rushed after her.

 

She sits on her bed, her head bowed low, her voice even lower as she kicks the hospital floor with her canvas shoes.

 

You are standing at the doorstep of her room, the wooden door slightly left ajar.

 

You try not to eavesdrop but still you itch closer, straining your ears and peeking through, to the entrance, barely catching words that seem to be enwrapped in broken whimpers and long sighs.

 

Luna rubs soothing circles against her tensed back, her soft reassurance falling to deaf ears. She sits like a petulant child, not even moving a muscle or acknowledging Luna, but you can see a shoreline of formidable tears thieving down her eyes.

 

“I don’t have anyone else but you, Nona.” She hitches, closing her eyes, hiding her face between her palms. “Mama was never there. Papa left too. And now, you are leaving me too.”

 

You can’t hear from her grandma says to her. You have already turned away when you heard _her_ break down.

_She_ always seemed so impenetrable to you but looking through the colored glass, you see her distinguished vulnerable gaps.

 

“Don’t leave me please.” She begs over and over again and that’s when you turn away from the door.

 

 You wish nothing from than to hide her away far from everyone and shelter her in you.

 

She crying out there for Luna.

 

And you are crying out here for her.

 

Luna Woods passes away in her sleep, warm in her bed at an old age of 81.

 

Just under the docile, secluded warmth of the winter sun of early December.

 

 _She_ clasps her hand onto you.

 

You think Luna Woods died one of the happiest woman in the world. Because she died with a smile on her face in the company of eternal love.

 

“I don’t have anyone else.”

 

 _She_ barely speaks out. If you hadn’t been close enough to her, you are sure those words would have been swallowed in the distance between you.

 

“You will always have me.”

 

You say, with nothing short of conviction and promise, looking at her Nona, hoping she’ll hear the truth in them too.

 

Lexa’s grip only tightens on you, in response.

 

 

 

I promised you, you’ll always have me.

I fell short there too.

You deserved more than empty words and promises.

I won’t do it again.

_Tell me how do I make it up to you?_

_Yours C._

 

 

 

Finn Collins.

 

Cute. Charming. Hails from a good family. Not too bad in bed either.

 

What more do you want in a person in this mad world?

 

 He’s enough.

 

But at the end of the day, he isn’t.

 

His kiss on the most intimate part of you doesn’t make you as moist, as raw as a simple goodnight kiss of hers on your forehead does.

 

He doesn’t make you thermos coffees to help through your late night study sessions like her, either.

 

You know he knows that, too. (So, it doesn’t hurt that much when you break up with him post your second semester mid-terms.)

 

 

 

“Are you even listening?” Anya Pines indignantly asks from the other end of her room, shuffling through the pages of _The Communist Manifesto._

 

“Yeah, are you listening to what we have been saying to you for the past, I don’t know, since forever?” Raven pipes in.

 

She hums but doesn’t answer, instead turns to you, “So you were saying?”

 

Before you can reply, Anya snorts from the other bed and so does Raven, bickering about _her_ blatant disregard for their friends’ lack of attention for them, per se, _as always_.

 

“That was rude of you.” You finally relent.

 

 _She_ furrows her eyebrows, flecks of golden green shying onto yours, as if trying to convey something. But she’s silent. She says instead. “What were you saying, Clarke?”

 

You reopen the pages of your _Jane Eyre_ again, sauntering close to her, enough to enclose her parchment aroma around all the while trying to whizz the gagging sounds for the demented two.

(Three years of their noises had somewhat made you resistant, though _she_ always, still, looked like a raging bull ready to pine them down.)

 

 

 

You were never a people’s person.

Always brooding. Always regally nostalgic.

Always mine.

But things changed when I started noticing. How your eyes would light up when Costia entered the room. How your words would circle around hers and hers alone as if we weren’t even there. _Like I wasn’t even there._

You seemed so different to me, all of a sudden.

I asked Anya and she said, “She’s always like that with you. Like we aren’t even in the room.”

That was the night you told me Costia asked you out for a date. (Ironic since I was the one who introduced her to you.)

When I think of it now, I realized how you must have felt when I told you about Finn.

But you hid it didn’t you?

_Why can’t I?_

_Yeah, I still remember. (I nearly flunked my second term mid-semester papers because of that. Why did you think I broke up with Finn?)_

_Yours C._

 

 

 

It was a post-first year/pre-second year party at the dorms where you introduce her to your boyfriend Finn for the first time. Technically, you had only met him 2 months before in a similar inebriated setting as this.

 

One thing led to another. And now, he’s your boyfriend.

 

Under the dingy subdued lights of the room, you don’t notice her convulse of her lipstick stained lips nor the clasping of her fine jawline.

 

You most certainly didn’t notice the tragedy that uncoiled behind her darkened orbs. She drifts apart from your shortly. You try to focus of Finn’s hands around your waist instead of her prominent absence by your side.

 

But you have locked her in your periphery.

 

She drinks a lot.

 

She flirts even more.

 

Your eyes are rooted to her. But hers aren’t and soon after you lose her in the crowd of testosterone puberty hit college boys.

 

You try to sit up straighter in your sit, your eyes falling heavily under the metallic beats of the roaring thunder outside.

 

She comes late past midnight, reeking of alcohol as if she had drenched herself in a brewery.

 

Her teeth clatters and you jump right off, pulling off her clothing without jacket, then her shirt then clasping a woolen shawl onto her, you embosom her to you.

 

“What are you doing, Clarke?”

 

You are indistinct of her question. You had spent the last 3 hours pacing in your room waiting for her to come home, arguing with Finn on why he couldn’t spend the night with him …. You have worried about her only for her to return like rain socked cat and all your anger melted away in cold water drops.

 

“Trying to warm you up.” Because January in Arkadia was harsh. “Do you feel better?”

 

You nestle your chin up against her board shoulders.

 

“Much.”

 

She says shivery but the growing warmth of her skin against yours, the mild dancing of lithe fingers against your waist somehow lulls you dizzy.

 

_“Are you happy, Clarke? With him?” She asks you hesitantly over a mug of black coffee._

_You halt and look up to her._

_“Yes.” You one-wordedly say. Though you don’t understand the power of that one word in that moment._

_You watch the sudden collapse of her shoulders but she camouflages it before you can dwell in further._

_“Good.”_

The empty chair sits gawking at you.

 

It’s been six months and counting.

 

Brunch was silent.       

 

And now, dinner became suffocating.

 

You have hardly seen your mother these days. How could you, she’s working overtime, taking up night shifts in the hospitals or even when she’s home, she sits secluded in her room going through patient charts and is mulling over the cut out procedure that she would be performing tomorrow.

 

She doesn’t meet your eyes when she takes up the dinner plate from you and moves to the kitchen to clean them up. You lose yourself in the clattering sound of dishware and running water tap coming from the kitchen.

 

You rush out to your room, waiting for the end of summer to come.

_Because maybe your mother blames you too._

_Because in the morning Abby will be gone again and breakfast will be numb without him singing Frank Sinatra to you._

It was so fucking hard, so painful when you couldn’t still your hand around to hold a pencil.

 

It slipped every time.

 

You couldn’t get a night’s sleep with his cold stone face knocking on your slumber door, wetting your tears in subconscious tears.

 

You couldn’t accept he was gone and life was seeing no sign to stopping for a bit. A little bit.

 

The dark circles underneath your eyes grew in.

 

You cursed every single time.

 

At yourself. At her.

 

You blamed yourself on her.

 

You shunned her away.

 

But she stayed.

 

Even when she was not by you, you felt her.

 

She, not for once, asked for anything, not a shred of anything in return.

 

Then why was it that you wanted to hurt her, just so you knew how much she had hurt you.

 

You wondered if love was this.

_A ghost who left no footprints._

 

 

 

5 months after your father’s death, you have already flunked 3 of your papers.

 

Your scholarship was hanging by a thread. Another string of unperturbed hope which you knew wouldn’t last long either.

 

2 more months later, you flunked out of your fourth and final semester.

 

Your scholarship was lost.

 

The stitches in your hand healed.

 

But the pain remained. You couldn’t clench your palm, not even hold a brush without blanching out or reliving those memories over and over again.

 

 _She_ would be graduating this summer, first of her class. And you, you don’t know which direction you should be going.

 

 

 

Jason Rothenberg, who taught _Health and Disease_ was a horrible teacher, horrible teacher.

 

You were already in his class more than a year, since second semester so you had grown immune to his minute-to-minute gnawing tantrums and stunts. To you. To Maya. To Jasper.

 

And to _her._

_She_ , who joined his class for extra credits, however wasn’t accustomed.

And god knows why, Pike had a certain despise for _her._

 

Maybe it was because _she_ raised her hand at his every question, corrected him whenever he was wrong (which was quite often) … you don’t exactly know. (You do know though. His exaggeration of phobia towards homophobia wasn’t that discreet.)

 

He scowled at _her,_ barely acknowledged _her_ and his sly indirect comments made you want to murder him with his own register that he carried with him everywhere.  But things escalated too much, when he managed unearthly to fail _her_ on one of _her_ final papers, first semester.

 

It was Halloween. All of you were drunk and all of you were gaggling and trash talking about J.Roth and how he should take the stick out of his ass and actually come off of the _closet_ himself.

 

 It went on and on until _she_ pacified the whole discussion on four words.

_Blood must have blood._ And that let to,

 

One word.

_Vandalism._

 

She smirked. Nefarious. And sinister.

 

And you thought _evil had never looked so good before._

Jasper and Monty in _Vendetta_ masks would pee on his implicit front porch artistically aromating it in _that_ pungent smell.

 

They would then ring the bell slow enough to alert Pike of their midnight riddance but fast enough to run out of his sweaty clasp.

 

And when dickster Roth would be out running about to demand _justice,_ you and _her_ would slip in and maybe decorate the washed-out blemished walls with some of your own specialized handicrafts.

_I’m allergic to nuts._

_PUSSY. Push. Until. She. Screams. Yes…_

 

“We have to go, Clarke, like right now.” She throws the spray can and pulls you out by the window.

 

Behind you, runs him in his pajamas screaming out for you to stop. He runs all the way from the campus teacher’s lounge to the darkened classrooms. You have to praise his stamina, running around that well until the adipose tissue bulging out of his tummy and old age finally catches up with him and he stops but his foul tongue had still yet to catch up though.

 

You both run up and settle yourself against the farthest bench of a desolate classroom, bursting into series of loud drunkard giggles that echoes throughout the walls.

 

Her cheeks are flushed ruddy. You are half sure she’s inebriated herself beyond compensation but you can’t be sure in her presence.

 

It’s always intoxicating.

 

“Bottoms up, Commander Woods?” You say, flashing her your flask.

 

“Bottoms up, Skai prisa.” She slurs, clinking the whiskey glass against your poison.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you are liking it.


	3. Three

_A soft place to land_

_My heart, caress my scars_

_You hold me close_

_By my waist, under the sheets_

_Warmth mars the cold_

_Hanging somewhere beneath._

_You take my breathe_

_And I left it leave_

_There’s no space for anything else_

_Anything else, apart from you in me_

_I won’t diminish us in words_

_I’m looking for a soft place to land_

_I’m just looking for a soft place to land …._

 

You found this on a crushed out paper lost in the pandemonium of _her_ desk, somewhere on the onset off second year. You were awestruck by the intimacy of the lines, as if you were peeking into the folio of _hers,_ where you haven’t been before and you were baring out unknowing fumes thinking of who might have enthused _her_ to pen these words.

She didn’t answer the first time you asked, not even the next hundred times you pleaded too, but each time instead she handed you another disposition, an assemblage of her words. Just for you. And you knew.

You both knew.

She wrote poetry on your skin and you drew constellation on hers.

 

 

 

I visited dad again, today. I wanted to cry but I couldn’t.

Because there was nothing left to cry for.

He’s gone.                              

You know, I never meant to hurt you. It was me I wanted to bleed.

I realized that I had already forgiven you for my dad long before you ever asked for forgiveness, such is my love for you and it terrified me. Was I the conniving one here?

I don’t know.

Maybe because there aren’t any good guys in the world.

_Dad loved you too,_

_Yours C._

 

 

You meet her just on the brisk off your first month at Arkadia Uni.

 

You are boringly scrolling down your twitter page, drumming your fingers against the wooden table waiting for Anya to bring in your orders. Soon enough you put down your phone, eyes fluttering never long lasting to a somebody for too long and just like that you look out of the university café window.

 

In a flicker you trail your eyes towards the tailline of your fingers, not before halting and looking back up outside. There’s an old bookstore just out-front on the opposite foot, barren mostly except for the two girls standing outside.

 

A brunette and a raven haired.

 

But it was the chestnut hair that caught your eye.

 

Her face was turned, one hand gripping onto some book and the other onto her slung over bag. You didn’t catch her talking except she was nodding dutifully to everything the other girl said.

 

You had this odd carving inside you, to just see her face once. Once. The strings inside you were pulling and pushing your insides. She finally turned towards your direction and all residual air was soaked out of you. You barely noticed your cousin, Anya put down your coffee and sit on the other side. You barely noticed Anya scream out your name as you rushed out to her.

 

Even from just a few feet afar, you could see the clarity sweep over her face in tides before being stolen by a godforsaken ruddiness and happiness, plump lips twitching up at you before meeting you half way in an embrace which melted the partition wall that ran 6 years too high.

 

She melted you or you melted her, you didn’t know.

 

But she was here.

 

And there was nothing you could have wanted more.

 

 

 

Raven had met or more like accidentally befriended _her_ at freshman year of TonDC High School even though they had been going to the same school for 2 years then.

 

They met uncharacteristically in a bathroom.

 

Kyle Wick had been seen making out publicly on the eve of his first year anniversary with the cheerleader genius Raven Reyes. Publicly, she had wheeled out all of the gossip, dumping his ass and sticking her tongue down some wannabe’s throat but secretly she was crying her eyes out only to be intruded by a certain proud jock nerd Alexandria Woods.

 

Their relationship was uncanny.

 

From Raven’s words, you deduced that _she_ gave Rae what she didn’t want, but she needed. Respect and brutal honesty. _She_ never judged by the superficial layer of hers, connecting to those strings of Raven of things that was your of your realm of understanding.

 

The minute yet prominent spark in Raven’s eyes tells you that yes, yes _she_ had caved her admiration in her heart.

 

 

 

Raven doesn’t speak of her family but when you ask you she replies with nothing short of disdain; her mother became an alcoholic when her father left them 4 summers after her birth. She was sitting on the stairs of her pre-school, waiting for her dad to come pick her up.

 

He never did.

 

Something broke in her mother that day. Something that Raven never learnt how to fix.

 

She didn’t even care if Raven was home or not. Even for the holidays.

 

So you invited her over to come with you when semester exams were over.

 

The first year, you asked her, was a request. The following years later, it became a habit.

 

 

 

The tears in yours eyes stung.

 

You played his words in your head like a broken record, playing on and on and on,

_“You were cheating on me, Clarke.”_

_“What? Are you crazy?”_

_“Yeah, I’m crazy about you. For you. But you were never …. You know what hurts more than physical cheating? Emotional cheating. God, you should have seen yourself, the way you looked at her and all I ever wanted was for you to look at me like that.”_

_He pushes the chairs and shuffles harshly about. You try to get close to him, but he distances further._

_“I love you, Clarke.”_

_You pause in your wording._

_You can’t mirror his words out of yourself._

_“I want you, Finn.”_

_You relent instead._

_“We need a break.” He rushes past you, pushing you back a few steps, all you explanations meet nothing but blankness._

When he leaves you standing alone to an untouched dinner on your own birthday, against all odds and self-doubts, you call her up late enough at night and she doesn’t hesitate to run to your room wearing that dorky smile and two cartoons of chocolate.

 

The empty space that he left behind is enamored by her essence as if she was forever here. And half way through the movie, when you are playing with the ends of her loosening curls, the gravity of your realization shatters you new. _Maybe Finn was just right._

 

 

 

“I just need to feel, I just need to feel.” You chant like a prayer, slithering your fingertips against the plush satin alike skin of hers. Your eyes are still wet, your hands are cold and your eyes are numb of all and everything. Except her.

 

Except who lies still against you, in an exquisite stature of delicate taut beauty. You drag your lips hastily against hers, affirming your presence upon her lithe ones by sucking them slowly. Conniving slow.

 

You paint feather kisses against the expanse the deep groove of her beck, sucking and molding the skin, soft yet hard enough to leave your handiworks on her. She inhales deep under you, but any sign of content of sigh is held back by her own.

 

She sits still.

 

Only black aroused eyes, bereft of all its adolescent green stares back at you as you try to unbutton the clippings of her shirt, flushing your insides and set your more intimate core ablaze without so much so a touch.

 

 “I want you, so please just touch me. Please. Please.” You beg and this time she finally let goes of her conscience.

 

She undresses you, makes you transparent with her admiration.

 

She touches you not with regret but with care and respect.

 

She kisses you like there’s no tomorrow.

 

She never fucks you for once.                                             

 

She only makes love to you rhythmically through the night and you want the hours to never end. You don’t want the sun to claim the morning because you know when the sun will rise, things will be different.

 

You’ll probably lie to her, tell her how you got carried away in your drunkard delusion, that you remember vaguely. And that it was nothing and meant nothing. Maybe you’ll leave behind just a note of minimum bare words, like her biological mom. Maybe. Maybe.

 

You can’t not just forgive yourself, so how can you forgive her.

 

But today, you can forget.

 

And you’ll make her forget too.

 

Tonight you’ll make love to her. Again and again.

 

(Even though you might regret your actions tomorrow, you won’t ever never regret her.)

 

“How long does a second last?”  You drive your palms manically through her curled mane, stealing words in between tongued kisses.

 

“We’ll make it last forever.” She says.

( _7 months before she leaves.)_

 

 

 

The tension in the room nibbles, crawls up her skin. She tries to smile, put out a brave front but she can’t. Her eyes waver to the empty seat of yours.

 

She doesn’t know you won’t be there.

 

But she waits.

 

After 4 cold ice teas, the waiter comes again.

 

He asks again if she had want her bill.

 

She nods her head in a negative and waits some more.

 

It’s when the clock trumps 10pm is when she finally gets up. She hands up the bill for the beverages and if the waiter sees the dampness that emblazons her eyes, he doesn’t say anything except wishes you a genuine goodnight.

 

You are running up the stairs to your apartment building when you see her sitting on the stairs.

 

The strain in her eyes when falls upon the silhouette of your figure scruffy, unsteady.

 

You remember about that forgotten dinner that you promised her.

 

She stands solid on her ground and you are unkempt on yours.

 

She’s about to say something when you watch her stop, eyes frowning and mapping down the outlines of your neck before pausing somewhere. You rush your hand on the face her eyes steeled and you feel that uneven skin bruising under a mere touch.

 

Bleary goes your eyes when you sees her catching up with the unspoken truth.

 

“I waited for you.”

 

The tone relies the brokenness in her.

 

“And you were busy with … Niylah, I suppose?”

 

Your unavowed words speaks for themselves and she tentatively catches them all.

 

“When you left with just a note on my bed after having sex with me, I accepted it. When you told me you didn’t love me, I didn’t say anything either. When you said we could try to be friends at the least, I was so desperate to be near you I said yes. When you made me sit like a fool waiting for hours to a dinner that you promised but didn’t attend because you were preoccupied, I get it. I have enough brains to know that you still blame me, that even if you say you have forgiven me, you can’t forgive me and that’s okay.”

 

She ceases her words and runs her hands hurriedly through her red-rimmed face.

 

“I … I respect myself enough to walk away.”

 

She slips her hand easily from your grasp. She doesn’t notice or enough if she does, she doesn’t play heed to your tear clad face.

 

Her eyes were very shade that her face beholded. Myriad of colors from dawn to dusk, to charcoal back.

 

You don’t beg her to stop.      

 

When she leaves this time, _little do you know,_ it’s _you she’s_ leaving.

( _4 and 1/2 months before she leaves.)_

 

 

 

One time. I slept with Niylah one time.

Niylah Blunt was just a means to an end. I’m sorry I don’t know how to phrase it better but it is what it is.

She just wanted a release.         

And I wanted to sever my binding from you. Or so I told myself.

Still, it was your name that I screamed again and again. It was you I saw instead of brown eyes. It was like I was reliving our night together, your touch dazzling across my skin, my fingers tracing the vast flat domain of your inked back.

I was so angry with you then. I still am, a bit.

There’s never been anyone else for me.

Just you. 

_I hated myself for a long time after that._

_Still do._

_Yours still and maybe forever._

_C._

 

 

 

I miss the little things.

Our little things.

I miss how I would snuggle into your lap, and you would read me forlorn tales from yellow pages.

I miss how you would always complain about wearing a dress, and I would say you would look beautiful whatever you wore nonetheless.

I miss how you would always fall asleep, book as your pillow still wearing your glasses and I would remove them.

I miss how I would kiss you on the cheek every time you picked out pepperonis from our pizza topping back at our dorms.

I miss all your intricate little things.

_I miss you like someone has robbed the sky of its moon._

_Yours C._

                                      

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I edited the time table from the first chapter onwards. I hope you like this one.


	4. Four

 

Sometimes memories to you are the worst form of torture. Maybe because you only reminisce the bad times, when you look at your dad’s wrist watch.

 

The burgundy band is worn out, torn. The dial in it is broken. Out of tune. Stuck at the time when hell had broken loose.

 

8.37 pm. 2th March, 2014.

 

Your mother had gifted him this watch when she got her first salary as a doctor back so many winters ago. And ever since then, your father had worn it on his wrist with pride. He considered it his lucky charm and he never wanted to be without it.

 

Yeah in short words, he was a hopeless romantic.

_She_ had handed over this watch after his death to you knowing how pronounced it was for you but like any other human, instead of mourning for it, you hid it away from your view. Away from sight, away from mind. Except it never was. At the end of the day, you held onto it when you cried yourself to sleep.

 

A part of him was tethered still in the sands of time in those dials and you never wanted to part with it, from its plethora of memories.

 

That’s what you thought months ago, when you was still in denial of his death. You held him too tight to let him go thinking you’ll forget him in the chapters of your life that were yet to come, you felt guilty for not saving him but now you know it wasn’t your fault. What will happen, will happen no matter what.

 

So you let him go.

 

But you never cut the strings to him. You just set his love free.

 

You pick up the watch and place it lightly in the small box and then you wrap the ribbons around it, wrapping it up to complete foliage of turquoise greenness, putting it at the back off your drawer. When the time will come, you will give it away. You will give it away willingly and happily.

 

( _It’s been 7 months now that she’s gone.)_

 

 

 

In every tattered building, you see at least one aged man who had been residing in that building for more than half of their lives, jovial and widow (mostly), withering away with time.

 

Mr. Patterson or _just Alfred_ was one of them.

 

In vague pieces, he sometimes reminded you of your father.

 

“Forgot your old man, aye kiddo?” he says, opening upon his door as he crackles forward on his walking stick.

 

“I’m sorry. Work’s been keeping me on my toes past few days but I did happen to bake you this cake.” You hand him the fruit cake, his favorite.

 

You part from him after a few more words, heading up to the third floor of the yellowing building.

 

You walk up to _her_ door, sigh breathily at the lock that clings to it. You pull out another letter from your bag and slip it down the entrance.

_It’s been three months now that she’s gone._

“It feels so good to be home. I skyped whenever I could but there’s this airy feeling you get when you have been away for a really long time and when you finally get to sleep on your own lousy bed, you are just content at the smell of your smelly pillow. Jaha Junior was inviting me over to dinner the other day when he starts quoting that the general stoic me was getting all nostalgic and had started psychoanalyzing me now that he’s some big shot psychiatrist.” You look up at her quizzically.     

 

“What?” She raises her eyebrows at you.

 

“Nothing.” Another pause. “I didn’t know you have been talking to Wells, let alone be friends with him, getting dinner with him and all. Last I remember, you were ardently complaining about him being “Big Daddy’s presumptuous boy who gets a kick out of correcting people’s grammar.””

 

“Fuck, he still does it. It’s a _whom_ , Anya not a _who_.” She imitates Wells.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Yeah. Fuck this is good. Can I have another?” She calls out to the bartender for another refill of her long island iced tea.

_“She’s_ going to miss it, your birthday I mean. _She_ used to make such a big fuss about it. I wanted to smother her sometimes.” Anya laughs drunkenly into her drink.

 

“Yeah. I don’t feel like celebrating this year.” There’s that inevitable cease again. “We should get drunk, An.”

 

“Let’s get drunk then.”

 

To finally coming home. _Anya raises._

To finally getting my degree. _You exclaim._

 

Anya and you clink your glasses against the lily-livered illuminance of the small bar.

 

“So how is it? Touring around … Travelling all over the country … saving tournament goals underneath the preying eyes of zillion fans? How is it?” You ask readjusting yourself in the bar seat.

 

“It’s scary as fuck. But exhilarating. So darn freeing. From the fans to the traveling around, all those I never thought I have go or get a chance to. It’s hard but it’s good. Really good.”

_“She_ loves to travel too. I guess that what’s _she’s_ doing now.” You lazily add, alcohol already shrouding your mind. Anya nods recollecting those random memories.

 

You order another set of shots. And another. And one set more.

 

To Seattle Reign FC.

To Seattle Reign FC. You chorus, raising another renewed glass. 

 

To dreams coming true. She slurs.

To _her._ You tipsily say.

_Four months she’s gone. And you are still counting._

 

 

You place the single white lilac in front of him.

 

It seems like just yesterday but it feels eternity in your bones.

 

A minute later, another lilac joins the solitariness of your single flower.

 

She stands like a statue by your side. If she hadn’t touched your hand you are sure you might not even known it was her.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“Whatever for?” She says, utterly confused.

 

“For stealing money that one time out of your purse to go to that rock concert, when you grounded me not to go out with Bell and O.” You airily say, eliciting a hummed laugh from the both of you for yellow memories.

 

But pensive thoughts soon lull you over. “For not being straight. For not carrying on your legacy at med school.” Your voice lowers its octaves until your words come out at whispers. “For not bring Dad home, safely. For stealing the love of your life.”

 

“We were arguing a lot that day. Sometimes I think if we hadn’t fought, if I didn’t drive, heck if I didn’t force dad to drive half across the country maybe this could have been avoided. If I had something different maybe he would be here. Maybe we could have saved him.”

 

Streaks off tears works down your cheeks as you try to barrel them in, clutching onto the grip of your mother.

 

“She did go back for your father, you know that right? Of course you do because I told you so many times already.” Abby wounds her cardigan tighter around her bod, placating your wet strands off blonde hair out of your face. “She pulled Jake out. It’s not like she left him dying in some hell hole. She went back, she did her utmost to save him. She couldn’t. She tried and no matter how much it pains me to say, she couldn’t. So you have to forgive her. You need to forgive her. It’s not her fault she’s alive and Jake isn’t.”

 

“She did save your father, Clarke. She saved him by saving you, because if something happened to you, I don’t think Jake could have survived it. Parents should never watch their children die, my child. No pain is gruesome to a mother or a father than that.”

 

Your face lays hidden upon the mantle of your mother’s chest, her words settling upon like a forgotten symphony.

 

( _Four months before she leaves.)_

 

 

 

You were under the shower fully clothed, the cold numb water blazing against your tight suffocating skin. You had your head against the bathroom tiles and within moments you had this constriction in your chest, this coiling and uncoiling of barbwire squelching your lungs for air.

 

And in open eyes, you suddenly felt the same harshness of rigid icy water stealing all screams and leaving your speechless as you tried to fight against the car glass to open up. It was eerily black, the seat belt wasn’t opening and the car jerked deeper. You feel your left palm flame up as glass pierce the flesh of your soft skin through and through it. You screamed again. You screamed for help, for you, for your dad, for her.

 

You moved rushed in your own alive reverie and then you slipped your footing.

 

The reverie broke in glass pieces. And this time when your scream, you scream for _her again and again_ and when the bathroom door opens, it’s your mother your gawks at you terrifying when she finds your lying on the marbled floor, blood gashing out from the foot of your feet.

 

She deduces you have twisted your ankle but otherwise, superficially you are fine.

_Superficially being the effective word here._

 

Your mother toys around with her coffee while you slip into yours, your fingers running through the pages of your semester readings.

 

The tension is awkward, and your mind’s worn out and you are stuck reading the same line for the fifth time again.   

 

“You haven’t had a panic attack in quite a while now.” She states hesitantly.

 

“I didn’t.” You say matter-of-factly.

 

From the fringe of your irises you see her hovering around for questions, the _why_ and the _what triggered it_ being voiced out loud enough without the utterance of any words.

 

“I miss dad.” You say. Your eyes drift to the phone just beside you, lying dormant and uselessly. _No reply, no voicemail nothing from her._ “I miss you.” You think, aloud enough for Abby to jerk her head sympathetically towards you.

 

“Did she call you?”

 

“Nothing.” You look up to your mother hopefully. “Did Lexa call you? She has to call you right? It’s been a week …”

 

“No.” She cuts you off mid-way. “She didn’t.”

 

“I never blamed her. I thought I did, but I didn’t. It’s easier to put the blame of anyone else but yourself, I suppose. I did that because it was the easier way out, because all I felt was guilt. And blood of my father’s hand on my own.”

 

“Clarke … ”

 

“It’s ok, Mom. I know it’s not anyone’s fault but sometimes when I stand in front of the mirror, it becomes hard to accept it. But I hope one day, it gets better.”

 

“It will.”

 

( _14 days after she’s gone)_

 

 

When I was waiting for mom at the hospital I met a guy named Aden. All dirty blonde and cheery smile waiting for his wife, sitting in the patient’s waiting room and not for a second does he make me believe he has bone cancer, osteosarcoma.

Not for a second. Not until his wife comes from the pharmacy with his meds that he’ll need following his surgery. They even have this 4 year old kid together, Tris and I was mummified. I didn’t know whether to apologize or feel pity.

He doesn’t ask for either. Except he’s happy.

He smiles when his doctor ushers him behind those white doors.

He smiles and kisses his wife a bit too longingly at her cheek and wipes away her tears, planting soft _I love you’s_ on her skin.

I stayed with his wife till the end, until she was safely tugged by his side. She tells me this is his fourth operation. Every time the doctors shrink it, it somehow comes back but Aden fights. Afresh very day.

And I still visit him sometimes too. He’s doing well. For now.

He tells me, death is not the end.

Because death doesn’t have the power to take away those memories of our loved ones. They stay forever immortal in us, rejoicing in our happiness, shuddering in ours tears.

Because chances are, he might not even get to see his little daughter get graduated or see her marriage but that didn’t mean he should live in fear of the unknown.

Because life is a culmination of many many stories. You would be a fool to drop down your pen at one.

You’ll love him, Lexa.

He reminds me of you in every word he says.

_I guess, everything reminds me of you because he makes me want to believe too._

  _Yours C._

I feel so astray. So disoriented. So haphazard and derailed. I keep asking myself what is the purpose of life. I’m where I wanted. I work in a gallery, my pictures even get showcased more often. I earn decent money, live in this small studio apartment. Stay close to my mom, but I feel so old in my bones. I’m only 24, but still.

You know, I was going through this catalogue _Amazing Australia_ and I fell in love with Melbourne.

I can totally imagine you, adorned by handsome heritage cultures and flamboyant architecture, fringed by beaches.

You always wanted to be in motion, stroll against the tides, and run your pen faster and mightier than any sword.

 _The Herald Sun_ will be a fool not to recognize your rakish budding flair and probably will hire you permanently. I’m so proud of you. You deserve every happiness in the world, Lex.

_Just don’t forget to remember me, ok?_

_Yours C._

Your first day to redo whole of your fourth and final semester wasn’t that … hard as you would have thought. It didn’t seem askew. It meant like a fresh start. Except everyone you knew had graduated and you weren’t in the shape for making new correspondence with anyone.

 

You took refuge in your art, finding solace in the silent movement of paint brushes, away from her thoughts or her echoing absence but even stillness brought you closer to her.

 

“You know, Clarke.. ” You get startled by the sudden appearance of art professor Kane’s voice from behind you. He pauses before looking at the contours of your still deformed eyes and then looking up at you. “Why don’t you finish wait after class in over. I need to talk to you about something.”

 

The audience of students bristles out no sooner the bells rings. Marcus Kane assembles his files in a precision before stepping in front of your painting again. It’s the same except the unfinished eyes were now brushed in green, not the kind of green that could be described easily. It was almost like they were green and grey at the same time with blue creeping it onto its edges. You loved those eyes.

 

“A big issue of painting that most painters, artisans, whoever don’t know, is how to translate the materiality of paint into something that points beyond itself. It’s not something you can imbibe or learn, it’s something that grows within.”

 

He traces the outlines of _her_ eyes. “The inspirational source provides that illusion, that mystic gesture to the artist. Whoever it might be.” This time he looks up at you. “I would be happen to present your paintings at the ArkU gallery opening, Clarke.” He looks back at the canvas and smilingly looks to you. “I’m sure you plenty more, I would see and show.”

 

You can only nod. Already out of breathe, lashing away those miniature dampness that shelters near your eyelids.

 

( _Three months after she’s gone.)_

 

 

 

Green isn’t my favorite color. (It’s grey, in case you forgot, ahh. Yours is still blue, right?)But, I love the green of your eyes.

The passionate churning green. That the ocean turns during a storm. Like the forest at sunset, the leaves clinging to the very last bits of sunbeam as long as they could.

I might be biased and I’m definitely being selfish to say this but I find myself in those green over and over again. Even when I’m lost they had anchored me to the shore.

_Always have and always will._

_Yours C._

 

 

 

Anya had joined the Seattle soccer team when they recruited her just shy out of her graduation at 2014 and since then she had all but travelled, rarely home no more than a week or two. Plus, Octavia was moving for her job here, to Chicago with her newly found romance (whom you have yet to meet) Lincoln Woodland. And Bellamy Blake had tagged along as that “unwitting by-product”, O had snorted out. Hence it had unavoidably ended up in a chaotic party.

 

In between the forge of new friendship and renewing old ones, you had taken every moment out to look for her, to negotiate your inner turmoil. It has been nearly two months since she left. She stopped seeking you out after that Niylah incident, something that you had wanted except now you realize you never did.

 

You barely talked to O or Wells or even Anya before you had walked out in search for her. You would rather have her near you, fight with you, scream at you than be far away where you can’t travel to her. Like right now, where she was curled up to the sides of Raven. Under the golden lights, you could make out her flushed inebriated eyes that had stuck onto Reyes as if she was her sun. She was a lightweight, she always has been so why the fuck had Rae got her drunk was beyond your comprehension.

 

She was caressing _her_ cheeks a bit to softly, almost as if brushing off those invisible tears that aren’t there in her face. Despite that, _she’s_ smiling and that’s what stops you from stepping forward.

 

 _She_ hasn’t smiled in a long time since _him._ Since you. So you push put more people, push some more of your frustrating moisture and move to hide yourself in the kitchen.

_She’s here_ and you’ll soon talk to her. Soon.

 

 _She’s_ prominently stuck in your periphery and in your mind’s eye when a third voice makes the hair in your skin crawl up. “Someone’s stealing your girl? She’s hot, by the way.” Finn whispers before stepping back a step, pointing subjectively to a certain Reyes.

 

“What the fuck you think you are doing here?” you snarly whisper.

 

“A friend of mine got an invite, I tagged along.” He chugs up his drink, shortening his distance towards you, clogging your air with his pungent breath. “God, I missed the way you say fuck, Princess. So fucking hot.” And before you can stop his passage of thinking, his cheap rum reeked tongue is shoved down your tongue. Somewhere a glass breaks in the distance. It’s takes a moment to jolt out of your shock. By the time you push him up, and look around for her, neither her or Raven is found.

 

 

 

The strain in _her_ brain makes her alcohol induced sleep short lasting but by the time _she_ wakes up, the outside is brimming with sunlight. It takes time for the heaviness hammering in her head and the glass cut pain in your hand to settle. Blurry vision subsides momentarily and it lands to the unfamiliar room _she’s_ in, currently without a fiber on _her_.

 _She_ gets up or at least tries too when a death grip on her waist stops _her_. When _she_ shuffles off the covers a stark naked Raven greets her, snoring. _She_ prays to the god for not letting it be what she thinks it is but the stickiness between her thighs points to the inexorable. _She’s_ already dressed herself while she waits for Raven who merely wraps the thin sheet around her chest.

 

“We had sex.”

 

“We did.”

 

“I like you, Lexa.” Raven says. “I like _like_ you.” Raven emphasizes for clarity.

 

“I don’t know what to say. You know how I feel.”

 

“Yeah, I know.”

 

Raven pulls the sheet closer to her body, wrapping into under the guidance of the chilliness even against the rising temperature.

 

“It would be unfair to string you along and I value you too much as a friend to risk that. I’m sorry.” Lexa crosses the room and rocks the physique of hers in an unyielding squeeze. “It would have been easier though, if I had fallen for you, Raven Reyes.”

 

“But you don’t do easy, do you Commander?” she tauts back mockingly, taking her bruised hand in hers.

_Lexa had clutched her glass so hard when she had seen you and him, that it cracked to pieces in her hands. Raven didn’t ask why. She didn’t need too._

 

( _3 months before she leaves.)_

 

 

 

It was cloudy for April of 2016. There was no sky that day, only a rough woollen blanket of mottled grey to cover you all and block out the sun. The usual iridescent hues were muted to the point of dullness and inside you it was dwelling as dark as the night before.

 

The gloom of the day was reflected in you as you were already running late for the first lecture of the day of your fourth semester, starting over again. You barely crashed onto a rather unexpected Lexa on your dorm room door. She thumps a box pull of things onto your floor, muttering about these being your things. She looks a bit too longingly at you when she thinks you are not noticing, and every time you look up at her quizzically her gaze slips away and you don’t want anything but to have those eyes on you.

_We need to talk, we need to talk;_ four words rummage through you. Even she shifts nervously on her feet bubbling with some anxiety you don’t know about and you are about to ask when the bell rings and with a _I’ll see you later?_ you cut all your thoughts short.

 

She stares at you again and you stare back boldly. This time, it’s she that leaves you hanging with not a _talk to you later_ or a _I’ll see you soon_ but with a _goodbye_ that sounds permanent on her tongue.

 

You don’t put much thought into it. By the time you turn back after walking a few steps towards your classroom, she’s gone like she was never there.

 

( _She boards her flight to Melbourne when you are in your philosophy class trying why is it so easy to say hello and so hard to say goodbye.)_

 

 

 

I called you, I emailed you. I had even decided to stalk you on Facebook or twitter or even Instagram because I had nearly forgotten how techo-retard you are. So I thought about writing to you, this long paragraph of everything and pretty much nothing except I don’t know your address. Voila. You have really eluded me this time and I fucking don’t have a clue how to reach you. You didn’t even tell me that you were leaving and bam, I come home and mom calls, “Lexa left, Clarke.” Followed by, “She didn’t tell you?”. Fine go, whatever. I don’t care.

_C._

 

 

 

That’s the first letter you wrote to her. Just 2 days after she left for Melbourne. At first you kept it in your drawer, but every time you opened it, the unsend words had peeled you over, so you slipped it through the bottom of her door. You regretted it the second you did and since you couldn’t retrieve it, you wrote another one.

 

 

 

 _I do care._ You had begun. _I care a lot. ~~I treated you badly.~~ I treated you in a way even an enemy doesn’t deserve. There was a time when I cut my hands because I hated them. _ You pause. And then you write again. _I killed my father, no matter how much it wasn’t my fault, in a way it was. It killed me. And when I had damaged my hand. I didn’t know if I could ever paint again. It was like slowly drowning to death. But I’m ok now._

_I do care for you._

_~~I love you, Lexa.~~ _

_I care for you more than you ever know._

_Yours C._  

 

 

 

And this is how it began.

 


	5. Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a renewed chapter. Let me know how it goes?

 

_USA Today_

_New York Times Summer Internship_

_LA Times_

_Reuters Global Internship_

_The Herald Sun_

 

Acceptance letters were sprawled in colored envelopes.

_We are happy to inform that you, Miss Alexandria Woods, have been accepted in our journalism internship …_ and so on stretched the black printed inks on the scrolled paper, ending in the rather same conversed words … _we are looking forward to your email as the earliest._

She mulled over the letters and without a twinge of hesitation she started typing her acknowledgement and heartfelt thanks, addressing it to the Chief of _The Herald Sun, Australia._

 

If anyone asked her why she had chosen that particular newsletter, which was geographically oceans apart from her home, she would give a masked answer on _how it was one of the best_ ; _how jovial she was to get the opportunity to travel Australia_. But it was a chorused half-truth of an answer, one she had practiced far too many times in the mirror, so that her tongue wouldn’t get tied in the weight of deniability of her feelings.

 

Because for once, she was choosing head over her bleeding heart.

 

Because she wanted this distance that was going to separate the both of you to be enough.

 

To be enough for her to stop hurting.

 

To be enough for her to stop dreaming of someone she could never have.

_(A month before she leaves.)_

 

 

 

You are not supposed to hurt the person you love. No matter what the circumstances. Not matter how lost one is, you shouldn’t hurt the person you love. But I did over and over again. I can justify my actions figuratively, intellectually but emotionally, no there’s no justification for them.

You must be tired of hearing my sorrys by now. Still, I’m.

_Yours C._

 

 

 

“On a brighter note, it seems like we are going to stay friends forever.” Raven hypothesizes from our current predicament, shifting on the small bench in the police station pretty frowningly adamant on the fact they would be facing jail time. You on the other hand can’t help but laugh at the weird absurdity of the statement though, the reverberation of her statement stays like a happy hum within you. Raven obscurely laughs out too, nodding her head in a continuous to and fro, and Anya isn’t far behind either, gently squeezing her left thigh in reassurance. 

 

It’s Lexa who still remains muffed in silence, stoic she stands, hands crossed in front of her chest, eyes drifting between Raven and black eyed, swollen faced Emerson on the other side. When Raven bites her gashed lip shifting eyes hesitantly to _her,_ like a third person you see the hesitance in Raven vanishes in thin vapor when green eyes convenes on sullen brown ones, rejuvenating them with tranquil binding safety.

_Her_ eyes falls on Emerson again, you see him twitch under her far away predatory gaze. You bundle yourself out from Raven’s side and take your place by _her,_ snaking your lone falling arm behind her back.    

 

“Mind telling me what happened from the beginning, Miss Griffin?” interrupts Inspector Becca Lane.

 

_You never imagined your third semester starting in such havoc of a way._

 

_“Drinks on me.”  Anya calls out to the bartender holding out her new card out. Lexa jabs her playfully at her ribs. “Already showing off?”_

_Anya swallows her poison, “Considering I’m the only one with a professional job? God it feels so good to shove out your own card you know.”_

_“No I don’t know.” She giggles out knowingly and ends up on the receiving ends of one of Anya’s smacks. She searches her pockets waiting from the drinks to come. “Shit. I forgot my phone in the car. I’ll be right back, Lex.”_

_Anya pushes a few tumbling men out of her way before exiting herself from the club._

_You and Raven had been maniacally dancing up and down the illuminant beats, with yourselves mostly but sometimes with whatever people you had beside you. Figuratively speaking it was a mash of drunkard bodies and even stupider and drunker steps._

_Currently a mash up of Sorry and Into You was barring through the loudspeakers and like an inebriated habit you twirled around Raven. Joining hip and swaying your dance steps in whatever way they came along with two other guys who had quite blissfully added into themselves into your quo._

_But its like you said, it was a mash of drunkard bodies and even stupider and drunker steps, so you didn’t pay much heed. You also didn’t pay that much heed when one of those brawny ones slyly had whispered out their name as Emerson in your ear buds. But when you had seen Anya leaving for the exit, you looked back to Raven who was dancing off her feet with the other guy so you moved aside to get off from the floor only to be held by an unpleasant tug on your wrist._

_“You are leaving the song half way, babe.” His alcohol reeked cologne clogged your sinuses. His steps were wobbly too. There was a minor push and shove between the two of you and soon he was lost in the mob._

_“Clarke?” you might have been heaving at the previous exchange that you didn’t hear her calling out your name until she steadied you up._

_“You ok?”_

_Instead of answering, you slipped your scotch pausing to relish in the burn of the fluid._

_“Just .. stupid men.” You say under her unperturbed gaze, following your gaze towards the dancing crowd. She stares a bit too long out there before nodding back to you._

_“You do have worn a very enticing dress.” She had coarsed out not to aloud but you hear it nonetheless. It’s not first time, blushing darkened eyes fall not to subtlety on the distinct curvature of your ample cleavage that peeks out of the folding of the dress. You sit a bit more up rightly at her, and when you catch her eyes again drooping down to your chest area, you don’t hold yourself criminal at this moment._

_“My eyes are up here, Woods.” You husk out and as predicted she chokes on her drink and you are awestruck in her adorableness._

_“Want to try a margarita?” She squeaks out. “Drinks are all on Anya.”_

_“A margarita, sure. With a straw, no I’m not as dorky as you yet.” Slipping on the margarita, you ask. “Where’s Anya anway?”_

_“Forgot her phone. Maybe we should go get Raven, it’s been a while.”_   

 

“And where is it that you found Miss Reyes?” Inspector Lane asked halting your train of thoughts.

 

“After looking around her, Lexa and I, we found her in the girl’s washroom. She was crouching on one side of room” You hesitate in your stance and look up to Lexa who nods. “.. and Cage Wallace was lying on the other side unconscious and there was blood coming from behind his head. He somehow slipped and fell but he was breathing erratically and his pulse was weak so we decided to take him to the hospital.”

 

“You both were there when he fell?” Becca questioned.

 

“No. But ..” Becca cuts your statement. “Just because Miss Reyes told you that he slipped and fell, you believed her?”

 

“Yes.” The resolute yes resounded from the three of you.

 

“Cage followed me to the bathroom even when I had exclusively said no. He tackled me in the fucking bathroom and I pushed him off. He was already drowning in his alcohol so much that he couldn’t even steady himself, let alone me. I was struggling out of his clasp when he fell and his head hit the floor.” Raven firmed her opinion eyeing Becca in clenched fists. “Just because I danced with him doesn’t mean I’ll sleep with him.”

 

 “And what of Mr. Emerson?”

 

“That man doesn’t know the meaning of personal boundaries.” Anya replies from behind you. “Being the loyal minion, he followed us to the hospital where he rather brutally tackled my cousin and one thing led to another and I punched him.”  

 

“That’s all Inspector Becca?” _Lexa_ commandeered out _her_ words to the bereft officer. “Can we leave?”

 

Becca eyed _her_ protective stance, arm draped meagerly around your waist. The tightening of _her_ jaw didn’t go unnoticed by Becca either nor did those icy daggers that were emblazoned in her each intimidating step, mainly pointing to the suspect that sat glob smacked at the other end.

 

“You can leave if you want to but they can’t, not without a lawyer under these circumstances. Also we are waiting for Cage’s father to arrive. Dante Wallace.”

 

“I’ll call in my lawyer.” And with that _she_ was out to their earshot.

 

Inspector Becca glanced over to Emerson, murmuring out to no one in particular. “Well, you sure are lucky you didn’t get hit by _her._ ”

 

Dante Wallace may be a man who could shower in money but he’s demeanor was of any common man. He had a soft sharp spoken edge and an even sharper cut in his glances. He soothed the imagined wrinkles out of his tailored suit, his gaze loosening their edginess at he watched over his sleep son and you couldn’t help but feel empathy.

 

“He’s been out of rehab only recently. I thought he was going to be better now but alas.” He took another longing look at his alcoholic son placing the medical reports on the table. “Rest assured there won’t be any case from our end. And if you think so to then the matter will be closed here and now itself.”

 

The chord of his statement unrested you. Raven shifted uncomfortably at her chair. Indra Forrest, Lexa’s lawyer nodded to her. “We would like a restraining order against both of them, nonetheless, Mr. Wallace. For their reassurance and safety.”

 

“Of course.”

 

Indra nodded in her acknowledgement for further processing before exiting.

 

“It was a pleasure doing business with you, Miss Woods?” Mr. Wallace taking in Lexa’s hands in a formal shake. “Mixing pleasure in business is dangerous and truly I can’t say it was.”

 

Placing a soft kiss on your forehead, she gestured Raven out.

 

“Coming Clarke?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

You picked your bag and slung the door open when Dante Wallace spoke, staring at the painting of a solitary lighthouse on the hospital room wall. “Dreams are such sandcastles are they not?” His sarcasm seemed to be wept in weepy tones as he still admired the painting.

 

“Do take care of yourself Miss Griffin and of your girlfriend, the lovely Miss Woods.”

 

Redness bloomed in your cheeks faster than you had clicked the door shut.

 

 

 

The 12th floor which mainly remains clad with interns buzzing around like flies, is pretty much desolate now. It’s 2pm, everyone’s out on a lunch break.

 

Everyone except _her_. And there are also some others who are probably dozing off near the water coolers or something.

 

 _She_ had earned her reputation as a workaholic just within the first few days at _The Herald Sun_ but at the same time that had earned her a few unruly names behind turned backs; _bitch_ topping the still lengthening chart in the usual testosterone ruptured environment maybe because of her cold aloof don’t care behavior or maybe because they thought _she_ was too proud to talk to a commoner now that _she_ had been short listed for joining the newspaper as their new permanent journalist cum column writer.

 

 _She’s_ busy scribbling on her laptop, vaguely registering someone standing behind her chair until the soft flipping of the pages of the calendar catches _her_ ear lobes making _her_ yelp up from _her_ seat. The intruder stops the turning of pages, before circling today’s date in front of _her_.

15th  July.                                                           

 

Lexa pauses _her_ writing and pushes _her_ glasses up her nose to look up to _her_ intruder standing astute as ever in a grey blazer outlining a short dress underneath it.

 

Any website or tabloid confines Vera Rogers in words,

_Wealthy socialite._

_Daughter of the Chief of editor of the newspaper, Edmund Rogers._

And another being, _a bisexual freelance photographer and a total flirt._

 

“It’s my birthday today.” She states.

 

Lexa’s eyebrows scrunch in amusement mingling with confusion at her statement because _she’s_ pretty sure everyone who has eyes can see the hanged up decorations that had leaf no place untouched, clouding the glass rimmed building under myriad unlit lights.

 

Vera pushes herself in, further inside her small cubicle relaxing her back against her desk.

 

“Go out to dinner with me?” Pleads the puppy hazel hues of Vera’s, tilting her head towards the left imploring her urgency on the issue.

“I have work, Vera.” She excuse herself out for an umpteenth time. “Hadn’t your father, Chief Rogers arranged a party of you?” She asks, shutting the screen off her laptop.

 

Vera toys with braided ends of her own trailing ends of her ginger haired strands. She grins at her but it doesn’t touch her eyes.

 

“Go out on an early dinner with me then, Alexandria?” She still insists. Lexa doesn’t have enough heart in her to say no again and be the one to seize the glitter of hers.

 

“Ok, but I’ll pay and just I want to be clear that …”

 

“That this is not a date? I know.” Vera accepts the fallacy of their outing but Lexa doesn’t think Vera understands the depth of _her_ words, nevertheless _she_ lets it slide.

 

She has already twirled back on her seat to reopen her document when from her fringes, she watches her slowly turn over a framed photograph that Lexa had shown her the first time they had met.

 

“You know you never told me who this blonde friend of yours is.”

 

She points to the one face that soaked everything out of Lexa. Green eyes falls on the brown framed photograph, and Lexa can’t help but smile dreamily at the way you had encompassed her in your arms. Light yet firm.  Raven face palming gleefully with a rather irritated Anya, and your eyes were solely glued on her. Lexa was the only one paying attention to the camera lens anyway that day.

 

The picture was taken somewhere during the summer holidays in the backyard of your house by your dad, Jake. And Lexa had kept it forever since.

 

It was a good day, she thinks before Lexa feels a hand on her shoulder blades and reality settles in. The smiles falls from her face when she looks at the frozen moment again, a strand of wetness lingering somewhere in the borders of her eyes.

She feels empathy in Vera’s voice when she speaks, “Bad break up?” Lexa doesn’t answer.

 

“Did you lose her?” she asks again.

 

This time she finds hers words, but they are barely fresh out of a few octaves. “Clarke Griffin was never mine to lose.”

 

She suffices and accepts her answer not with a why or a how but with a simple, “Ok.” When hears her retreating steps, Lexa turns around. “Happy Birthday, Vera.”

 

In the distance Lexa can’t make out her smile but the chirping dance in her steps makes her believe that maybe a friend wouldn’t be so bad here. She picks up the frame and whips through the soft dust that hangs up against the glass.

 

Her eyes stuck inevitably on you. 

_It’s been three months since she left home. Left Chicago. Then why did Alexandria Woods feel that she had left a trail of broken hearts behind?_

 

 

 

Kane surveyed your wall of paintings at the ArkU exhibition. He nodded his approval, he brushed his palms against his beard studying the intricacy of your art as if searching of some lost limb.

 

You knew what he was looking for.

 

“These are all very good but I do have to ask where those paintings I saw in class are? I was looking forward to them being showcased.” He muses at you.

_They weren’t mine to give away,_ you almost set those words lose. “They are private, Professor Kane.” You say and he agapes. “But I do have this another painting I would like to exhibit.”

 

You tug off the covers to your canvas projecting forward your painting. A metaphor of love and imagination drawn in charcoal, tinted in sides with black ink that somehow demonstrated itself into a pagan of unyielding beauty of _hers._

 

A red velvety cloth slipped down the armor clad leather body from _her_ right shoulder metal blade; You had tamed her wild untamed curly hair in braided strands in the drawing, her eyes were black tar crushing in the avalanche of an insatiable, unsustainable flame that engorged your dreams often; she wielded a sword but it felt for like a divine extension of her own bod, with prevised shards and blades embedded in her warrior vest.

 

This was how you saw _her._

Perceptive. Resplendent. Statuesque. Fierce.

_And,_

“A masterpiece in its own.” Kane praises and half way through his rant, _she_ drifts in your mind’s eye and all of his words just falls past you.

  

Your father was that man in the crowd who would cheer for you in the frontier and whistle incorrigibly at your apprehension. He didn’t, wouldn’t miss a single not even a trifling moment when you would win something. Even if it was gold sticker or an award in an art competition. He was that man in your man.

 

But unlike him, Abby Griffin was a polar opposite. She was a good mother but she was a practical woman. She never added wings to your dreams. Like many times before, when you would invite her, she would just pensively add a “I’ll try to make it” to the end of the sentence, instead of ever making it to your art shows.

 

You had started to accept it.

 

The verity.

 

But when you see her rushing towards you, you are assuaged. You whimper under your mother’s arms when she surprises you with her visit to the exhibition.

 

“Jake would have been so proud, baby. He would have been so proud.”

 

And you know he is.

 

In your mind’s eye, you see him. His hand on your shoulders. Humble, appeasing you.

 

She thrusts cheap champagne into your hands before clinking her own glass against yours and inhaling the liquor in one long gulp.

 

“Not bad.” Raven says totally dismissing how the air had shifted between the two of you.

 

“What are you doing here?” You rasp out. “Not that I don’t want you here or anything …” You cease your words again, burrowing her into your enclosure, “Doesn’t matter, I’m so happy you are here. I missed you, Rae.” You snivel out against her shoulders. The stiffness of her muscles fades, Raven rises her arms past your shoulders and tightens the embrace, dampness trespassing her own vision.

 

“Mom’s here too ..” You joyously say but it doesn’t surprise Raven. “You asked her to come didn’t you?” You bewildered.

 

“I told her yeah, but I never asked her to come. That she did on her own.” She swings her arm between yours, “Best friends for life remember?”

 

 

“I hurt her badly, I was in pain and I hurt her, I hurt you, I …” But she stops you right then and there.

 

“Pain changes people. Makes them overthink everything, trust less and shut people out, even the closest ones. You hurt her, you did but she also knew what she was getting into. And about me, you and I both know I made a mess messier.” Raven thumbs over the slightly dashed mascara over your eyelids, until they are pristine. “I think you have cried enough Clarke. It’s your day. Enjoy it. Even though _she_ isn’t here, I know _she’s_ proud of you. We both are, babe.”

( _Four months after she leaves.)_  

 

 

 

I drew a Commander-ish Lexa painting of you, you the one which I drew the very first time and you asked me if this was how I see you? Yeah. This is how I see you, _imperfectly perfect._ It got the highest bid of the night at my ArkU exhibition. When I went up the stage to collect the apparent cash prize from the patron, I wanted you there on the first row, my own personal cheerleader.

But you weren’t. That empty gap that your left behind it resonated throughout the walls of my heart.

Its 2am now when I’m writing this, and I miss you. Just like I did last night at 9pm and just like I will miss you tomorrow when I’ll wake up and you won’t be there.    

_Yours C._

 

 


	6. Six

 

 _She_ tenses when you press your lips against her cheeks.

 

Your lips flare up at the utter lack of self-control but somehow the rosy cheeks of _hers_ tells you otherwise.

_She_ has you flustered again.

 

Lexa eyes the countable handful of people, warily as if waiting for some unknown shoe to drop and shatter the glass. When you touch her, it’s only then she lets long of her breathe that she didn’t know she was holding back. 

 

Lexa looks at you, her emotions all over the place. You pulling her out of the little congested pizza place.

 

“Lexa, what happened?” You ask. She looks up at you and then to the little pizza place. You follow her gaze to the glass of the eatery but you see nothing out of the ordinary.

 

She sighs through her amiable lips, gesturing to the orange lit road ahead. “I …. Can we walk?”

 

Dusk comes sooner than expected, the last of the sun's rays cosseted behind those soft grey clouds. The last sun rays kiss the heathland, the greens and purples of the park melting into orange black in the forthcoming play of the settling dusk.

_She_ sits at the end of the small bench. _Her_ eyes glued to the rupturing foliage of colors and you are sitting there watching in break in water paints on her face.

 

You have only met her just a few months ago in ArkU (which you stil honestly couldn’t believe) after 6 years, in front of that book store, Lexa’s _new go to place,_ as Raven tells you.

 

You share only one class in your first semester but in every break and what not you are with her.

_She’s_ still _her_. Except now _she’s_ tough.

 

Except now, _she_ talks even less.

 

Except now, _she_ thinks twice before returning your touches.

 

And quite oddly, it doesn’t settle well with you.

 

Because back when you were kids, you thought this…this between the two of you would never die.

 

“You are staring.” _She_ lamentingly says.

 

You are thanking god for the dusk now, the burgundy of your cheeks shrouded out.

 

“What happened?” You repeat the same question you had asked her. Like before too, she’s silent. You want to tug her in you but you don’t want her to flinch and most certainly you don’t want her to feel out of place. So against all urges, you stay put.

 

“You are best friend, Lexa. You’ll always will be. No matter what.” You exhale out instead.

 

Her eyes were like a clear lake in a dark forest and if you had look closely you would see shallow green crevices. And you did. You always did. This time though, it’s her who comes closer to you, tangling your vacant cool fingers in her lithe ones.

 

“I’m gay.” _She_ blurts out thickly.

 

Lexa has been adept at hiding her broken insides, you realize. You nod, your lips slightly open at her declaration.

 

 _She_ begins.

 

“Mount Weather High wasn’t very open minded”, is how she starts. You furrow up your brow but you don’t intrude. She continues.

 

“At 14, there, I learnt I was gay. I didn’t realize it until I met Echo there. I was the new kid, totally out of the loop and I was missing you so much. Echo was the one who first talked to me, told me about her best friend Emori and how she here and missing her best friend who was in the other state. We connected. And I liked her a lot and I suppose that’s mean I knew. I always an inkling but being with her solidified it. She didn’t wasn’t ready to come clear about her sexuality, something about the high school hierarchy and it was fine with me.”

 

 _She_ thumbs over your fingertips and nails, frowning inwardly at the almost yellow memory.

 

“Somehow someone knew and it spread in school, faster than wild fire. Her parents, they were Christians and they didn’t, wouldn’t accept her lesbanic phase deeming it as a ruthless spontaneity. The school bullies, Nia and Ontari Queen, they didn’t make it any less easier either. They humiliated us, called us horrifying names, pranked our lockers, slushed us even. I stood my ground but Echo’s grew faulty. I couldn’t really blame her. She transferred schools at the end of the semester. I called her a few times but you know it panned out … It grew so fucking lonely after anyway. I was getting so tired with the sheers from everyone.”

 

You move inches closer to her, wrapping your left arm around her shoulders. “I’m so sorry.”

 

She nods. Her fingers taps on your freckled skin, a spring rose coloring her features. “I still remember, I was walking up to my classroom when the Queens “accidentally” dumbed their canteen food all over me. I broke Nia’s jaw that day and I had never felt more relieved. I got detained obviously but it didn’t matter. I transferred to TonDC anyway, but I survived you know.”

 

“Shouldn’t life be more than just surviving, Lexa?”

 

 _She_ doesn’t answer. She just meets your gaze midway. Maybe it was a lapse in your judgement but you saw her eyes gaze a few inches down from your eyes to your lips, before picking them back up again.

 

This time when she walked, her stride was lighter, more carefree. And oh the smile she gave you, linking your arms together, as if some over largely child had just leapt off from her shoulders after a piggy ride.

 

 

 

_You are in your third semester._

                                  

It’s February 7th in Arkadia, Chicago.

 

The cab pulls in front of _Grounders_ , one of those few yet exceptionally reasonable prized places that was within your budget. _She_ graces out of the car in her kneed black dress, with a too skin clad leather jacket on, cinnamon hair dancing on her shoulders.

 

You pull your own blazer around your waist, tugging _her_ inside the warmth of your much awaited destination.

 

“You didn’t have to do this, Clarke.” _She_ says, curious green eyes furrowing over the menu.

 

You nod, almost explanatorily. “Raven’s already throwing you a birthday party at the dorm, everyone will be there. I just wanted to do something nice for you, a pre-birthday gift of sorts.” You say, shifting shyly, putting you menu card down.

 

“Plus, I know you wanted to come here for some time.” You add as some prolonged after thought, swirling the tongue over in the inside of your cheeks.

 

All of her unvoiced emotions stands bundled in deep cyan as she peers at you, past her strokes of eyelashes.

 

“I wanted to show you something.” She says from the secluded corner of your seating area. She peels off her jacket, the aesthetic view of her perfectly adipose arms hitching your breaths and you suddenly see the previously uncharted milk skin of her right bicep inked in waterfall black.

 

You recognize the drawing on her arm instantly. It’s the one you had drawn on an early winter morning, whilst padding your thick warm socks against the floor, Lexa’s own legs webbed in yours. You had painted that drawing inspired by the broken infinity symbol curbing along _her_ spine but you had almost let it a tad bit incomplete, and even you are sure you had thrown it away when you realized it wasn’t good enough. _Good enough got her._

_You kept it,_ is what you think.

 

“You … what?” You ask agape. You want to touch it.

 

“I completed it.” She says, and then she moves her chair from your polar opposite until it’s next to you, where you can touch her. You run your fingers along the traversed skin, taking in the ink, how regal and majestically it shines out in raw glory.

 

“You kept it. But …” But you are silenced by _her_ pierce. “I was too beautiful to not too and I fell in love with it.” _She_ smiles, brushing her shoulders against yours. “I’m famished, Griffin, might as well order.”

_She_ talks about pursuing an internship somehow close to home here after graduation, and you talk about your art. Working in a gallery, maybe someday owning one and exhibiting your art too, somewhere close to home. You both fill in with sighs and unchalked dreams.

 

 _She_ catches you staring at her but you also catch her staring back.  Still every now and then, you look at her from the fringe of your eyes, eyeing the outlines on her skin.

_She has you marked on her skin. Permanently._

_It’s like wherever she’ll go, a part of you will always follow._

 

 _She_ argues for likely ten minutes to split the bill but you don’t bulge. Instead on the way back to campus, licking the frosty milk along your ice-cream in the crispy cold February weather, she nuzzles into you, her peppermint cologne resolves in your nostrils.

 

You ask _her_ to wait in front of your dorm, when you slither in through your door and come back out in a blink retrieving a small brown package with you.

 

“Clarke…” You know that tone of her too well but before she can chastise you any further, you shove your second last gift towards her.

 

“Open it.” Is all you say, encouragingly.

 

Nimble fingers finally unwrap the strings of the brown foliage to reveal a hard covered yellow book, a little bit torn on the edges. You watch her awestruck, numbing her hand through the surface, before turning on the first cover of Love Story.

 

Tattooed on the first page in a fading black ink is signed _Erich Segal._

 

“It’s one of the first editions. It must have cost you a fortune. Clarke I can’t …. ” She’s shutting up the book, foiling it safely before you even have a chance to explain.

 

“It’s second hand. And it wasn’t even expensive.” You point out back. Helplessly.

 

“Clarke.” She singularizes out your name. Tersely.

 

“You should never return a present back when someone gives you with love.” You plead in your perfect spring sky eyes.

 

“You are the best thing that has happened to me, Clarke Griffin.” Her electric blues chants like bluebells as she heaves against you, pushing your ever so delicately against her bod.

 

And in her smile, you are sure icebergs melt _so what is your mere heart in comparison?_

_She’s the best thing that had ever happened to you too._   

  

 

 

Raven says it’s because she’s doing her undergrad and some of her early grad assignments needed for her fellowship, that she didn’t have time.

 

You nod and take a stir look at her.

 

She looks away, instead focuses on the dangly boring ceiling of your dorm room with an empty bottle in her hand. She’s doing that a lot lately.

 

You dangle another bottle of the moonshine, _Jasper and Monty’s,_ new creation and take a long swing of the cold burning syrupy liquid.

 

You don’t count how many seconds pass. You are sure it’s been hours since you lie on your bed. You stare at your phone all throughout that while.

 

You haven’t talked to _her_ since the party. Since Finn kissed you.

 

 _She’s_ avoiding talking to you. You know that, but still behind closed lids you are tracing her softness.

 

You haven’t forgiven her, no, but you are trying too. And you know, that maybe one day will come sooner than later.

 

And you whenever you think about Dad, you think about _her_ , and you think,

_You don’t stop loving someone just because you hate them._

_Love. Love. Love._

 

So you are here.

 

Staring at your phone and tracing the softness of her skin on a picture, babbling incoherently in your slurriness when Raven perks at your certain speech.

 

“…. I didn’t know I had a thing for tattoos until her. She even has a little _Luna_ inked, inked … “ You slur, recollecting your lost words only to be placed in by Raven.

 

“Under her right breast. Yeah, I saw it.” She states just like that and the subconscious truth defrays down tangentially.

 

Raven is the first one who chokes at the depth of the words, scribbling on her feet and onto your bed, where you lay frozen.

 

“Clarke, I … ” Her hair is frizzled. It evilly reminds you of the morning when she had returned to your room after the party, in disoriented clothes and fluffed eyes.

 

“At that party?” Is all you say, darkness swallowing your own tears.

 

She nods. You hear her snivel.

 

“Clarke, I …” she begins again but yet again she gets stuck at the _I._

_I what? I’m sorry for sleeping with her? I fucked her? I made her scream? I like her? I love her? I what? I know what she means to you?_ You argue with your insides.

 

“You like her.” You finally let go the truth of those teary brown eyes. “I don’t care, Raven.” You say and with that you turn over on your pillow not giving her a chance to explain.

When she slips away, you try not to cry too loud when she actually _I do but I know you too_ but you cry turns into drenching sobs when she says, _I’m so sorry._

_She_ calls on out of your induced drunkard coma a day and a dollar short. Raven isn’t anywhere in the room.

 

“Now you call?” is how you soberly answer.

 

“Clarke, I …”

 

“What?” You echo back.

 

The stableness in her voice petrifies you. “I just wanted to let you know that it was a mistake. From of our sides. It wasn’t Raven fault alone so don’t blame her.” Her voice lowers to an octave.

 

You barely hold back your tears.

 

“She likes you, you know.” You somewhere hoarse out.

 

“I know.” She answers, and you are sure she’s biting her lips to hold on to more words that she doesn’t want them to slip. You want to ehar them all.

 

You want to hear the _why? Why her? why?_

 

You want to scream at her that you hate her for it because she’s not only killing you inside but the knife that she has in you, she’s twisting it slowly at its own vigor.

 

 But you don’t, because.

 

Just because.

 

“I don’t care.” You parrot the same words you told Raven. Only they come out with a lot more anger than your foretold.

 

She doesn’t retaliate, but you hear the wavering sigh from the toehr end.

_Why? Why? Why?_

_Still knocking your doors._

 

“I know.” She says, infinitely sadder.

 

You hang up the call.

 

(Two months before she leaves.)

 

 

 

“Clarke?” You halt midway at the stairs. Professor Kane comes rushing in hurried steps to meet you. Without further wastage of time, Marcus Kane stuffs his hand in the inside of his blazar and pulls out a white envelope.

                                             

He hands it over to you.

_SkyKru Arts_ engraved in swirling black.

 

“I heard you were looking for a gallery to work in. _SkyKru Arts_ has an eye for mining talent, so, I wrote a recommendation letter, just in case.” He gestures the letter towards you.  You are a little to very much dumbfounded, a wetness slipping in your arterioles as you grow through the penned out words.

 

You still back the dampness in your throat, “Thank you” fingers draping on the printed white cover. Marcus Kane shrubs on this greyish white beard.

 

“You are the one of the best students I had the pleasure of teaching.”

 

He simplifies he’s turmoil of opinions.

 

There’s a slight nod of his head, a light grasp on your shoulders and with another nod, he smiles _at your come forth future._

That light weight of the black hat on top of your head, the long tailed black apron that clung on you settled down nicely.   

 

Your mom had clicked photos, of course that had left you somewhat beet red, whilst the rest of your friends sat under the July sun fanning and some more fanning themselves and complaining much to the chagrin of others.

 

But all of them came. Even _Anya._

 

Your eyes glistened under the beamed rays when you were awarded the top honors from your batch, the prestige of the weight feels like an answer to all those prayers.

 

The _finally._

 

To have crossed that finishing line.

 

To the ending of another chapter of your life.

 

Your evening of celebration ended shortly enough. In one too many beer glasses and barbequed pizza with extra cheese topping in a place _DropShip._

On your way home you stopped the cab at _her_ building.

 

Like every other day, you had sighed against _her_ door, slipping a few more words through it.

 

_I graduated today._

_I’m proud of me._

_I hope you are too._

_Yours C._

(Four months since _she_ left)

 

 

 

“Who’s he?” had been your first question when you saw a slim tall silvered haired man in jacket _Joshua Danvers_ joining your mom and Anya at the dinner table.

 

“A colleague at a hospital. Ortho surgeon.” That had been your mother’s clipped answer, but more met you than her short words.

 

Anya didn’t say anything throughout, just short nods and curt smiles but you caught the shudder in her eyes every time she meets you.

 

And you weren’t totally oblivious either.

 

To the not so subtle touches of Abby’s hands on his hands, to those longing glances when she would ask him to pass some bread and those small smiles they shared in between, that dance in their eyes.

_The unspoken language of lovers,_ is all you can think.

 

You hold the spoon a bit too tight, bite your lips a bit too hard and you want to shut your eyes but you can’t.

 

Dinner stretches far too long in stuffed silence.

 

“Come on, Abby. Let me help with those.” Joshua gets up, his left hand on Abby’s back.

 

When you look at him, you almost catch the brimming love swimming in his dark eyes as he eyes your mother.

 

He’s a complete stranger to you, yet he looks at your mother like like …

 

And that’s when you break.

 

“How could you do this?” You push aside your barely touched food. Watery eyes stuck on a bewildered Abby.

 

“How could you betray dad like that? It’s only been a year and you are already…. “ you push down a lump down your dry throat.   

 

The surge sudden of feeling was overwhelming your senses. The television droned on, news channels mostly.

 

Your face had become rigid, jaw clamped tight, teeth grinding.

 

“My mother has been apparently seeing someone close enough to her to invite him over for dinner to meet her family and I hadn’t even known his name. Jesus.” The pencil streamed tears blur your eyes drifting from your mom to Anya.

 

It was time to get out of here before you did something that you would regret but the long forlorn face of glassy shards on Abby’s said otherwise.

 

The damage was done.

 

In standing my chair flies backwards, falling.

 

You somehow manage to whisk out with your purse, the desperate calls of your mother swallowing out till you are down the steps of her house.

 

“Clarke.” Anya rushes in long strides but you wheel your arm out of her hold.

 

“You knew didn’t you?” Anya shies away from the scrutinizing gaze and quite accurately you get a glimpse of _that Raven Reyes who shied away identically when you had asked her about her whereabouts the previous nights._

 

“She’s happy, Clarke.” Is all Anya says. You don’t meet her eyes. You swing up your right hand and hail into a cab to destination unknown.

 

The well is still there in the downtown park, except age too has taken unwitting toll on it. The green shallowly weed creeps, triangulating it, the bricks are out of joint mangled in dirt.

 

But the little gems still lay like reins under the shallow waters.

 

_At the bottom of the wishing well lay hundreds of pennies, some green with age and others still that shiny brown. They lay all calm, sagacious. You stop to glance down at them through the clear water._

_You didn’t know what they stood for of course, but there they slept like ruins, silent gems on the bottom._

_A seven year old you had asked your dad all your questions, bubbling in your mind. He took your hand and palmed it on his big warm ones._

_“Each one is a heartfelt wish or prayer. Each one represented pain and hope.” He had told you._

_“Make a wish, princess.” Yes, you were your dad’s princess._

_You had dug a hand into your jacket pocket and pulled out a coin, the smallest change you had and tossed it in, watching it sink, joining the others._

_You watched and listened in earnest ears._

_"This is how we are," he mused, "all of us needing hope, even if it's just pennies in a well."_

Your frozen heart shifts at the sight of his rippling gaze reflecting on the green water before you, your legs almost failing beneath me. You jerk your head.

 

He’s gone.

 

You stuff you hand into your jacket, snuggling out a dollar.

_All of us needing hope, even if it’s just pennies in a well._

You spot the repetition of the themes in your script as you write. Really, you should have diversified more.

 

 

 

I still believe that dad haunts me in ways I can never explain, never shake. And I feel guilty, so so guilty but when it gets too hard, I imagine your face.

I imagine you. Here. Saying. Reminding me, like always.

_Life should be more than just surviving._

Yeah it should be.

You deserve better.

So do mom.

Dad would have wanted that.

 

Yours C.

 

 

 

“I should have told you. I’m sorry.” You don’t miss the red swollenness of her eyes as she tells you after nearly 2 days of radio silence.

 

You swallow dryly, shaking your head vehemently, red tinted eyes of yours looking up to your messy haired mother.

 

“When I would work late shifts at the nights in the hospitals after ..” you watch her throat constrict into tightness, a too long silver tear lingering on her eyelash. “… Jake, he, Joshua, would bring me coffee. We never really talked but he kept me company nonetheless.  You were going through so much and I just wanted to be there for you but I was derailed, emotionally. And he was there. We weren’t supposed to be any more than friends but … “

 

“Mom.” You shift closer. “It’s ok. You don’t have to explain.” You thumb out her tears. “I’m so sorry, I’m just so sorry.”

 

The hug bridges you both and shuts out all the unnecessary words but against her shoulders you still ask her, “He’s makes you happy, right?”

 

She hums warmly in salty tears. “Yes.”

_And, that is enough for you._

 

(Five months after _she_ left.)

 

 

 

I have this studio apartment, like 5 minutes from the gallery. The space barely maintains 2 people and the pay helluva steep but it’s nice. The kitchen is merged with the sitting room, there’s a bed room, a bathroom with a tub too and a 4 step long balcony. Here, 4 stepped long balcony is a privilege.

I have a rough assortment of earthy furniture so isn’t curiously impersonal, the walls are in fashionable neutral colors. It’s not that bad.

If you were here, you would definitely say, “badly proportioned”, “cluttered” and “dirty”.

I didn’t want to use dad’s money and Mom didn’t agree start away either. On the bright side, the Art Institute is like a few blocks away.

I would love to take you there one day.

Trust me, you’ll love it.

 

Yours C.

 

(Six months after _she_ left.)  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The past flashes will most likely be up by the next two chapters, with one being totally from Lexa's POV.

**Author's Note:**

> This is something new I'm trying, so tell me if you like it or not?


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